Further Down

Posted on Oct 16, 2016 @ 11:43pm by Lieutenant James Barton
Edited on on Oct 16, 2016 @ 11:43pm

Mission: Fortress: Earth

Further Down
(Continued from 'Fire in the Sky')
=[/\]=

“Just under the surface I shall be,
all together at first, then separate and drift
through all the earth and perhaps in the end
through a cliff into the sea,
something of me.” - Samuel Beckett from an abandoned work
=[/\]=

LOCATION: Earth, San Francisco Bay
TIME INDEX: Immediately prior to 'Fire in the Sky'


Nearly four hundred years of exploring the stars, and mankind had lost more universal truth than it had found.

Humanity clawed its way to the penthouse suite on the food chain by learning the rules of the world around it, then by exploiting those rules better than other species. Fire hot. Sticks pointy. Rocks hard, and on those rocks, with bricks of data and observation, we built a temple to our own achievements. There were missteps along the way, certainly, right from the beginning, like when people learned that the tree-climbing tactic which worked so well when evading wolves was terrifyingly less effective when applied to black bears. But for all the mistakes and bloody blunders, there was a consistent trend towards certitude, a widespread understanding that we were amassing a collection of all the unbreakable rules of existence, a spellbook that would make mankind wizard royalty in dominion of all things. It would be hard to deny that it seemed to be going well.

Then the Wright brothers blew a 12 second raspberry at the unshakable gospel of man's inability to disentangle himself from the ground beneath his feet, and from there it seemed like there was a new trend: humanity divesting itself of all of its ironclad regulations in a bid to make a place for ourselves among the stars. Newton's apple may have been first on the ash heap, but it wasn't there alone for long, as it was soon joined by the absolute certainty that no human being could transcend the speed of sound, then the barriers of Earth's atmosphere, light itself, (by orders of magnitude, no less) and finally of solitude in the cosmos. With each day and year that passed, humanity shed more of what it had once been certain of, traded in for a step closer to the dream of exploring the heavens. Inertial dampeners had swallowed equal and opposite reactions, transporters had made obsolete the restriction to occupy only a single geographic space, the inability to create or destroy energy had been a problem ably solved by warp core technology. In a world without money but populated by men with wings in overcoats, a person couldn't even count on death and taxes anymore.

But for all the understanding, and even faith, that had been shed, there was still one piece of truth that remained consistent: When you see calm, look closer. Further down, beneath the surface, there is always chaos.

An example:

The streets of San Francisco are mostly still this afternoon, even relatively quiet. Many thousands of people still walk the city, going about their daily business, and for a great many of them, this is not even empty charade. But even still, further down, despite the calm and what sounds like silence, there are whispers, and rumors, and stirrings. For many, anger is surging against fear, shock thrusting itself along the surface of betrayal, grief seeping and soaking into the empty spaces of blame and self-recrimination. This is the fermentation of revolution, and while there's almost no sound to it, it smells of gasoline fumes pleading for a lit match.

Another example:

The waters around the Point Bonita Lighthouse were relatively tranquil. Pedestrians on the suspension footbridge, of which there were none this afternoon, could have looked down and seen almost no foam on the surface of the ocean. These non-existent tourists, or maybe locals showing visiting tourist family the sights, could have been forgiven, had they been present, for mistaking the lack of chop and drama on the water for thinking the depths below them equally calm, but they couldn't be more wrong, even if they had been something more than hypothetical, because further down, the ocean was alive. The teeming waters of San Francisco bay were most certainly alive, and not in a poetic and inspiring, uplifting beautiful kind of way, but in a raw, savage, bloody, saltwater kill-and-be-killed kind of way.

A seagull plunges screaming into the waters near the bridge and tears a thrashing shriner surfperch from just beneath the waves. Further down, a coho salmon made a quick dart for a school of plankton. The creature never even became aware of its full belly, as the disruption of its maneuver drew the attention of passing leopard shark. The spotted predator descended on the silver salmon, for even though it came from below, only descended captured the brutality of the fish's damned struggle against the teeth of the shark. This scene played itself over again and again across the waters of the San Francisco bay, an ancient spasming choreography reprising itself infinitely. Sometimes the prey escaped, but not very often. Such was life in the depths of the ocean where every ten feet put another atmosphere's worth of weight on the crush above and sapped away another measure of what quavery sunlight was left.

Further down, the light failed entirely and then the heat. There was only darkness and cold, but still there was the bloody dance, all playing itself out again and again beneath the misleadingly still surface above. Further down, the monsters got more dangerous, the fights for survival and dominance less likely to be solved in lunges too fast to see, and more likely to be solved in prolonged battles of attrition, inflicting one bloody wound upon another until one reluctant and miserable creature gives way. Further and further down, it's more and more likely that these struggles end in death, for one creature or both.


Further down, at the extremity of darkness, pressure, weight, cold and blood, a modified Federation runabout slipped without fanfare through a cloud of rising bubbles into the underwater dock of an ostensibly Federation facility. The facility contained the last desperate vestiges of a political cult of bigots and zealots, a cadre of ostensibly unaware officers brought in to both serve and camouflage them, and the firing controls for a weapon held against the temple of human civilization. The runabout contained the tip of St arfleet's spear of retribution. No matter how calm the surface of the water far above might be, the hounds of chaos had been unleashed into Edgerton's facility.

=[/\]=

LOCATION: Point Bonita Underwater Facility
SCENE: Submarine Bay


Something about the whole thing reminded him, in a way he knew he'd never speak about, of childbirth. The way that, just for an instant, the surface of the water in the docking bay seemed to swell, or the way the shuttle crowned through, dumping salty water down every contour of itself. He stared at it, knowing the angle and curves of the ship's architecture and how they seemed to bellow “STARFLEET VESSEL,” the way a new father would recognize his own nose or lips replicated in miniature. He hadn't been present for his own dead son's birth – Michael had been adopted, after all – but he thought that he could imagine, seeing this impossible vessel undeniably before him and feeling like he might actually have a hope of escaping this defiled and unholy place, what it might be like to stare at your newborn and feel like you'd managed to slip the grasp of the reaper, like you'd managed to stumble and fall headlong into a kind of immortality.

Even though Jim Barton's face hurt – a lot – he couldn't deny he felt pretty good. Alone, no longer. Still outnumbered, even hopelessly so, but with his companions here now. The shuttle might not have been large enough to carry the battalion of Fed Marines he might have hoped for, but he wasn't going to curse the good for not being perfect. He didn't doubt that Kass would be aboard, and likely Crichton. Maybe Byte; he'd happily take Pinocchio right about now, Jake's suspicions be damned. As the runabout's hatch began to slide open, he found himself suddenly wondering who was in command. Stranger, he found himself hoping.

*Michael,*

Inwardly, he frowned at himself. He wasn't thinking about his son, but instead about Michael Kane. But Kane wasn't 'Michael' to him. He was just 'Kane,' except for when he was, 'that goddamned Kane.' He wasn't 'Michael,' and he wasn't someone Barton particularly cared about seeing at that moment...except for he couldn't deny the sharp pang of disappointment when the familiar blue face of Aerdan Jos led the way off of the shuttlecraft. Why did he suddenly care so much about-?

Then he realized. The disappointment he felt at not seeing Michael Kane wasn't his at all. It was hers.

He glanced over at Selyara Chen, whose eyes were hard as permacrete and stone dry. Of course, she wouldn't show how much she'd hoped, knowing it couldn't be, that Michael would come for her once again. Of course, she wouldn't show that it was killing her that he hadn't, or even that it was killing her that it wasn't killing her more. Of course, she wouldn't consider admitting that kind of weakness, even to herself.

If he wasn't haunted by a ghost of her every thought, memory, and emotion, he probably wouldn't have even seen it. But, of course, he was, so he saw it written all over her face with the shame of someone knowingly forced to stand naked and stare into a two-way mirror. He realized that, once again, the echoes of her mind-meld made him both victim and voyeur. He didn't know if it was his own ghost in her head or just her peripheral vision that made her snap a glance in his direction, but the contempt in her eye was unmistakable regardless. Her stare narrowed and flashed with the incensed fury of someone who'd caught a spy peeping on an intimate moment, and the surge of embarrassment he felt for her was enough, at least for a moment, to drive out his general distaste for her, and he averted his gaze sheepishly. He regretted the concession immediately; Selyara wasn't the kind to let an act of empathy go unpunished.


Jos moved quickly down the settling gangplank, flanked in short order by Thytos and Bellecotte, each of them unmistakable in their Marine armor, despite the visors on their helmets which entirely masked their faces. Kass was short enough to fit into a luggage container, as he'd explained to her several times, (and each time she invited Jim to test his theory any time he was feeling particularly courageous or weary of living,) whereas Horatio Bellecotte was even larger than Barton himself, though without the enhancements and artificial youth. Together, the two of them in their otherwise identical armor resembled nothing more than a scale model placed alongside an actual completed construction of a Marine, or even the out-of-place pieces for some forced perspective illusion. The Andorian between them existed at a point near the center of the spectrum they defined. He surveyed the room around him with a cool and critical glance as he strode forward, his hand neither moving toward, nor drifting away from, the phaser at his waist. When he saw there were no immediate threats, he nodded both his head and his antennae in evident satisfaction, but he did not allow his shoulders to relax. His eyes drifted over the battered trio that served as his welcoming committee. He settled his calculating stare on Barton, the only Starfleet officer of the two there that he was acquainted with, and choked back his physician's first instinct to ask after their well-being. Though he still thought of himself as a doctor before anything else, he'd always understood when it was time to be the officer he'd sworn an oath to be. “Lieutenant Barton, your report.”

“We're here. You're here. I don't know if Edgerton knows that any of us are here because he's having some cohesion issues among his own people.”

[[Cohesion issues,]] Kass drawled from her helmet radio.

“We ran into a computer tech. An academy cadet, if you can believe that. Seems that Edgerton's kept the truth about those satellites up there hidden from even most of the staff down here. Our tech's an overachiever though. She went digging for extra credit and found thaleron in Edgerton's box of secrets. Near as I can tell, they found her fingerprints on Edgerton's data, and this place went into a lockdown trying to find her.”

Jos' stalks curled inward. “How do you know this? Have you intercepted their communications?”

“She told us,” Selyara interjected, finally deciding that no one was going to have the grace to invite her civilly into the conversation.

Jos' eyes widened a little in surprise, and he turned to meet Selyara's eye for the barest instant before he thought better of it and turned again to the Security Chief. “You've made contact? Is she here,” at this he glanced around the room again.

“She was,” Barton said, noticing but not calling attention to the roll of Chen's eyes. She's actually the one who unlocked the back door for you. But she's gone now.”

[[Gone where,]] Kass demanded.

“Something spooked her. Might have been the notion of you all coming in talking with your phasers. She hightailed it back towards the base once she opened the doors.”

“You allowed her to go,” Jos asked with a furrowed brow. “She could be captured. She could-”

“It happened fast,” Drayton interjected. He didn't like it when conversations happened around him that he didn't get to participate in. He knew it might have been a character flaw, but he also knew that the first step to solving any problem was simply admitting it's existence. With step one handled so deftly, he'd long ago decided to quit while he was ahead and forego any further steps. “It was either that or shoot her down while she ran.”

Jos nodded curtly and surged forward. “She can't have gone far. She obviously knows the computer systems, she likely knows the layout of the facility, and she definitely knows that we're here. All of those are good reasons why she should be spending time with us and not with Edgerton's people.” He drew up short and looked up into Barton's eye. “You're sure that she's not one of Edgerton's?”

“I'm sure. The way she talked, I don't think that, even down here, Edgerton's got any kind of stranglehold on people's loyalty.”

Jos' antennae nodded this time, signaling that he would accept Barton's judgment. “Okay, then. Then on top of everything else, she's one of ours and she needs our help. Barton, Ms. Chen, Mr...”

“Drayton,” Rax answered for him, ignoring the naked suspicion on the Andorian's features.

“Of course,” Jos agreed in manner that was something less than agreeable. “The three of you grab any weapons or gear you can from the supplies on the Red October and we're going after her.”

Raxl nodded, Selyara bristled, but it was Barton who took the first steps up the gangplank towards the interior of the shuttle. The smaller Marine watched him as he moved, and she cocked her head to one side when she saw his steps falter against the slight incline of the gangplank. [[Havin' some trouble, Jebediah Chastity,]] she inquired. [[Yer steppin' a mite ginger there.]]

He nodded bravely, even as another step clumsily devolved into a limp. “Yeah. But only because I got the shit kicked out of me.”

[[Again?]]

“Believe it or not,” he said as he neared the shuttle's door, reaching for an equipment drawer he knew would be stocked with phasers.

[[That happens to you a lot. You ever notice that?]]

“I have, indeed.” His hand disappeared into the drawer.

Nodding at Chen and Drayton, who were sporting plenty of bruises of their own, Thytos observed. [[Looks like you weren't the only one.]]

“No,” he agreed, hefting his bulk back towards the gangplank, his weapon chosen. “No, just to make it fair, we all got our asses handed to us a little bit.”

[[So you still gonna be able to fight if it comes down to it?]]

“When it comes down to it,” he corrected her, and paused in the middle of the gangplank, where he allowed himself a grimace of agony before he resumed his more laconic persona. He forced a half a smile onto his lips, but it didn't touch his eyes. All the same, there was a certain dark enthusiasm in his voice as he let his eyes linger on the weapon he now carried. “Yes. Matter of fact, I believe I will be.”

He moved further down the gangplank and she flanked him, ready to deny that she was keeping ready to catch him if he fell.

Crichton stepped towards them. “How's your nose?”

Barton nodded dourly at him. “It itched until this guy broke it for me. It's been better since then. So thanks for nothing.”

“'Nothing?' I got you down here in one piece, didn't I?”

Barton snorted. “Again, thanks for nothing. I notice you all took a shuttle. I don't remember that being presented to me as an option.”

“Well, until you made it through the shield, we couldn't be sure it was safe for the shuttle's paint job and there was a slight risk of spilling our drinks so...”

Barton chuckled. “I thought I wasn't supposed to have to deal with you until this whole thing was over anyway. That was the deal. 'Other side of the war.'”

“No, I said, 'underside of the war.' Underside. Like, 'under water.' You never listen when I talk.”

“You ever wonder why that is?”

Jake took a step towards him and his voice dropped in volume. “Seriously, though. You alright? With everything that's happened-” he trailed off. He didn't know why he was willing to bust the larger man's balls at full volume but felt compelled to keep expressing concern under wraps. He allowed that maybe it wasn't for his own benefit, but to spare Barton the need to admit his suffering at a conversational level.

Barton nodded. “The fall was nuts, Jake. I don't think I could ever describe it, and ever since then, it's been non-stop. Finding Selyara. They'd found Edgerton's right hand and his husband. Selyara had some kind of episode. There was the asshole who did this to us,” he gestured generally at his face. “Then finding this place. No time to stop and think, but I'm okay.”

Crichton only nodded, his mouth suddenly dry and devoid of words. It was what Barton *hadn't* mentioned which threw him for a loop.

*He doesn't KNOW,* Jake thought, and gulped down another pang of grief. The engineer was suddenly struck by the understanding that people on the surface didn't know about what Edgerton had done, not unless they had been inside... He stopped himself from thinking about Paris, or the people lost there. He groped for the ability to not blurt it out, but he knew that this was not the time. The information would do no good to any of them now, not when there was work to do, even if Crichton suddenly felt dirty, like he was carrying a particularly slimy and putrescent pile of filth.

Just as he felt he couldn't stand the stink in his nose anymore, he noticed Selyara Chen glancing back at him. There was a feral concern in her eye that seemed almost out of place in her normally-disinterested expression. She was throwing a glance over her shoulder at the two men, though her worry was clearly for the larger of the two. Barton was looking away, but she caught Jake's eye unmistakably, and she gave him the barest, but still unmissable, shake of her head.

Her meaning was clear. *Don't.*

*What the hell is going on around here,* Jake railed silently, but, of course, he would receive no answer.

“Let's move out,” Jos called out, breaking his reverie. “Let's find...” He paused, then turned back towards Barton. “What is the cadet's name, Lieutenant?”

Barton shrugged. “Ryan. Lynette or Annette or something like that.”

Jos turned to Drayton, who shook his head. “Well, then,” the Andorian sniffed.

“Lynette,” Selyara sighed, exasperated at her escorts. “Lynette.” Sometimes, all it took to be the Shadow Master was just to pay attention when no one else was.

“You'll know her when we see her,” Rax assured them all. “Unless a ripped up evening gown and housecat is standard issue around here.”

[[Ripped up-?]] Even through the suit's radio, Kass' confusion was crystal clear.

This time Crichton found his voice. “What the hell is going ON around here?”

=[/\]=

SCENE: Maintenance Corridors


Whether on a starship, a starbase, or a planetary installation, Jeffries tubes and access ladders were designed to eat away as little of the interior space as possible, so as a result, weren't the easiest to navigate under the most ideal scenarios, and the challenge only grew as more variables were introduced. For instance, trying to crawl along the in the tatters of your most beautiful dress instead of a pair of standard trousers not only led to pinning yourself in place every four feet or so, but also knocked ten kinds of hell out of your freshly shaved and lotioned knees and shins. Navigating the narrow confines of an access ladder was hard enough with both hands free, but blossomed into an entirely different kind of task when you were trying to simultaneously balance a bulky carrier containing in increasingly stressed and panicky tabby cat. But undaunted, she pressed on, making her way to one of the central shafts of the facility. From there she would...and that was as far as her plans had gotten.

Lynette Ryan felt like she had leaped from the frying pan to the fire, and then into a boiling lake of magma which was cascading through her up-until-three-hours-ago well-ordered existence and was presently incinerating her entire life to ashes. She was into Sam. Okay, *very* into Sam. But people fell in love everyday – she cringed a little in a delicious way as the word played through her head again – and they didn't have their worlds crumble around them. Worst case scenario, she should have had to worry about her Dad not liking him, or one of her friends being jealous of the time she'd spend with a new beau. Not...not this.

Had it all happened as fast as it seemed, or was it just a side effect of too many endorphins released into her system since she'd caught Sam looking at her in the morning briefing? A slight anomaly in the computer system, a chance to show off a little bit for a boy she wanted to like her, running the program, the impossible and undeniable horror that she'd found inside the computers. Sam had come to her quarters and she knew he had just shaved for her; there was the barest hint of an aftershave that caused gloriously disquieting flutters in her knees. Then he was gone, and there were alarms. She'd run because she was scared and because he'd told her to run. Then she found those people, those awful people who had immediately enlisted her aid with promises of assistance, and the instant she had done what they'd asked, unmasked their intent to bring indiscriminate violence and killing with them into her station. She'd opened the door and let killers in and now, try as she might, she couldn't escape the mental image of her Sam being gunned down, probably, she assumed for reasons she couldn't lay a finger on, by the black eyed Vulcan woman. In her mind's eye, her Sam was scrambling through the halls, searching for her desperately, when he takes the wrong blind corner too fast. The three of them are there, leering in the dark with their bruised and swollen faces. Sam's beautiful eyes widen in surprise, then further as he sees the weapons they carry. Time slows to a molasses crawl as Sam pivots, lunging away, even as the small woman, almost casually, raises her phaser. She smiles a cruel and feral smile.

*No!* It wouldn't happen. She wouldn't let it happen. She-

She stopped, and there came an inquisitive chirp from inside the cat carrier. There was a disapproving note to it, like an admonition.

“I just need to stop for a second, Mackie. I need to...” She was terrified, and she didn't berate herself for that. There was nothing inappropriate about her terror; she'd have to be insane for her pulse to *not* be racing like a possessed locomotive. But it was one thing to be frightened, and it was another to let fear rule your actions. She thought back to her academy classes. A Klingon teacher's aide in her freshman year Principles of LCARS course had shared with Lynette her thoughts on being afraid, which had stuck with the cadet since. Fear was a counselor, a wise and useful friend who's advice should always be carefully considered, but good counselors often make bad kings, and Fear could not be allowed to make a woman's decisions.

“I need to think this through.” She finally concluded, though Mackie kept his own opinions on her epiphany to himself.

She needed more information, that was first and foremost, and she needed it very quickly. Time was of the essence. Those people were in the station, and Edgerton's security people, not stupid men and women, were almost certainly looking for Sam by now. She would need to find him before either gang of madmen did, but she hadn't the first clue where to look.

She threw darting glances up the tunnel and back the way she'd came. The view was uncomfortably similar in either direction; the tunnels were marvelously compactly designed, but still consisted of kilometers of most undistinguished crawlspace. She forced himself to take a deep, slow breath and thought back to the last time she'd been in these tunnels, checking link after link of isolinear circuitry when they were trying to nail down a mysterious and pesky computer lag in this section of the facility. She'd spent the better part of a week not too far from where she crouched now, and she demanded her memory provide her a diagram of what was nearby she could use. Then she had it. Not far from here was a simple diagnostic monitor, one designed to allow maintenance staff to not have to carry tricorders for every foray into the tunnels. She began to crawl again, cursing under her breath every time her hem got pinned under her knee and she heard another tear from her dress. She knew it was ruined, and she could accept that, but the continued abuse felt like kicking a corpse.

Intellectually, she knew that it only took her a handful of minutes to reach the diagnostic computer, but she felt like she'd crawled for hours, pushing Mackie along in front of her, protesting most of the way. Finally, however, she reached the simple screen, and hissed in restrained exultation to find it powered. The monitor was programmed to limit data collection to the immediate area, so as to not put an excessive drain on the station's computing power, and even the hardware of the screen was relatively crude compared to what you'd find installed throughout most of the more well-traveled parts of the base. Simply put, the system just wasn't designed for the kind of search and retrieval she was planning on, but for all that, she never considered for a moment that she'd be unsuccessful. The system was tied to the computer, which meant that no matter how tenuous or fragile the connections might be, it was tied to every other part of that station's network. All she had to do was disengage the barriers that limited processing power and system access, then input commands into the hulking hardware fast enough to stay a step ahead of Edgerton's security protocols, some of which she'd had a hand in designing. *No harder than getting an armored tank to tap dance,* she thought, but not with a sense of fatalism. There was a reason that no less than the Head of Starfleet and the Federation had tapped her for this position, and she knew it. If she needed to, she could make the tank tap dance, curtsy, and pirouette.

She set to work.

In less time than it took her to crawl to the monitor, she had shattered the shackles on the monitor and was scouring Edgerton's system for anything that could point her at Sam. Her eyes narrowed as her fingers flew across the screen, inputting commands. Mackie's protestations went unheard and unanswered. Ordinarily, even with the challenges she'd already overcome, this would be relatively simple, but with the security alarms, and the automatic protocols that run anytime an emergency situation is logged, such as opening the emergency sub hangar doors, the system was teeming with irrelevant system requests and diagnostic logs.

Finally, she saw it. A brief communique sent through the station's security protocols a few minutes after the system logged a cataclysmic surge in one of the EPS conduits. It was brief, and non-specific, but it still pierced her heart like a needle of fire.

{{SecRpt 3a-Arrest. Crwmn Henderson. Sabotage: Faclty Ops. In cstdy. Transit: Adm. Edgerton Ofc.}}

Not for the first time on this awful night, Lynette Ryan felt tears slide down her nose. “Oh, Sam. No. Nonononono...”

She had to get to him. Edgerton's office would be a hell of a climb up the primary shaft, but she could get there. Maybe she could get there before Edgerton took out her treason on Sam. Maybe she could-

The screen blinked, and there was a new system operations note at the bottom of her screen.

{{Sat.Uplnk Engaged.}}

Ryan's blood turned to ice in her veins. {{Init. Pre-exec.Seqnc. Protocol: RighteousFire Auth: Edgerton-Omicron-Omicron-Omega}}

“Oh, dear God, no! No,” she shouted, forgetting, for the moment, about the need for stealth. Mackie let loose a plaintive wail.

{{Pre-exec.Seqnce: Engage. Thaleron Gnrtrs: Init. Targeting: Init. FireCntrl: Init.}}

He was preparing to fire the Thaleron. Lynette Ryan watched as the doomsday weapon which would close the book on Humanity began to rouse itself from slumber. But for a gray tabby, she was alone at the end of all things. She thought of Sam, and the things they wouldn't be able to do now. It wasn't fair. Maybe... Maybe at least she could go to him and they could be together at the end. Maybe, with Sam Henderson's hand in hers, she could stare unblinking into the darkness at the end of existence.

That was all that her heart wanted.

But there was something further down in Lynette Ryan that simply put its foot down and said, “No.”

She hadn't come to Starfleet academy to fall in love. She hadn't put in so many all-nighters studying system design and architecture of information protocols in hopes of finding a husband. She'd never set herself against such ideas, but she'd had other aspirations. A name of her own, a career of her own, inventions and creations and a legacy of her own, and most importantly a legacy built on pursuing, not what she might have wanted most, but what would bring the most good. DO the most good.

Love was love, and love was beautiful, but love could only belong to her as a woman, as a person, and Lynette Ryan knew that she had chosen to become something more, something which demanded a higher cost. She was a Starfleet officer.

Okay, maybe she hadn't taken the oath. Or finished all of her finals yet. Or all of her classes. Or...

But that was all just window dressing. Starfleet – the real Starfleet, the one that she'd only seen Edgerton feeding on in these final moments – was something that you either were, or weren't, down in your core. Edgerton obviously wasn't. The bloodthirsty gang she'd opened the door for didn't seem to be. But she was. She knew that now, beyond any shadow of a doubt, because while she wanted to do nothing more than to haul ass to the top of the station to find her Sam, what she did instead was point herself at the shaft that would take her, by the shortest route possible, further down into the guts of the station, where the computer cores were housed.

She could make a computer tap dance, curtsy, and pirouette. Now she had to find out if she could talk it into preventing an apocalypse.

*Not on your own,* she told herself.

=[/\]=

SCENE: Corridors


Blood had been spilled.

The members of the crew of the USS PHOENIX, with Selyara Chen and Raxl Drayton in tow, were doing everything in their power to avoid confrontations with the facility staff. Not only did every conflict threaten to deplete their numbers – and they were heavily outnumbered at the start – but they were keenly aware that not every person wearing Edgerton's security uniform necessarily subscribed to his monstrous ideology. As such, stealth had been the watchword of their movements through the station to find Lynette Ryan, but stealth could only be counted on so far.

After the first confrontation, a moment when the facility security all but stumbled onto the intruders, phasers had been keyed from 'stun' to 'kill.' Aerdan Jos had look desperately tired and sad as he'd given the order, but the armor worn by Edgerton's goons had proven adept at stymieing the low-power fire. Three of the guards had fallen in that first encounter, and four more followed, two at a time, as they progressed forward.

Jim Barton silently assured himself, over and over, that he was only killing Neo-Essentialists, even as he suspected that statistics insisted otherwise. But even if it were true, and every person who'd died at his hand today had been a true enemy of the Federation, he knew he still couldn't feel good about it. Every pair of eyes he stole the life from reminded him of LIMBO, of Elx Rodn and Snek and all the others who's blood he'd tried, perhaps entirely unsuccessfully, to wash off his hands. Even if the killing had to be done, and he believed it did, it was still dirty business. It was beneath him, a place he'd tried so hard to ascend from. This wasn't James Barton's work. For all his flaws, James Barton existed, at times by force of will alone, in a higher place than this. This was the work of someone who lived further down in the muck and the blood. This was Jacen Barnes' work and it sickened him.

So there had been blood, but what there'd been none of was sign of Cadet Lynette Ryan. Time was slipping past them and it was beginning to feel like they were spinning their wheels. There was almost no talking, short of when one of them would poke their head around a corridor and then announce, again, that they saw no sign of their quarry. Beyond that, the intruders kept to their own thoughts.

Suddenly, Barton who was on point with Bellecotte, held up a hand, signaling for a halt to movement and silence. Ahead, there was a lone patrolling guard, his phaser rifle held in a lazy grip, pointed at the ground. He was facing down another corridor, his back mostly to the group, and hadn't noticed them. Bellecotte held up his weapon, gazing at it meaningfully. Barton grimaced, then shook his head sharply.

It was just one, after all...

He could feel the gasps behind him as he slipped into the corridor, though of course there was no sound from any of his compatriots. He insisted to himself that he wasn't being stupid; it would be better to take out any resistance they could without bloodshed for a number of reasons, not least of which was avoiding reinforcements being sent their way. It wasn't guilt for the lives he'd taken that pushed him into that hall, risking losing the element of surprise when he could simply shoot the guard down from cover, it was prudence.

Wasn't it?

As he neared, the guard, the universe saw fit to free him of his tortured musings by inspiring the guard to turn and face him before he could fully close the distance between them.

With a shocked cry, the guard attempted to bring up the barrel of his rifle, even as Barton silently lunged forward. If he could get his hands on the barrel before the guard drew a bead on him, he knew he could force the weapon away. If he couldn't, the guard would disintegrate every one of his molecules in a single shot.

Neither of those things happened. Instead, the guard, in a panic, thumbed the firing control while still lifting the weapon. He blew a scorched hole in the gray carpeting in front of Barton's feet, but somehow Jim managed to continue his charge. He grabbed the rifle and tried to wrench it from the other man's hands, but found himself surprised by the strength of Edgerton's soldier's grip. For a long moment, they stood their buffoonishly, wrestling over the weapon. Bellecotte raised his own weapon, but couldn't get a clear shot with Barton's bulk in the way.

Then, drawn to the shout and the sound of fire, two more guards appeared at the end of the corridor in front of Barton and the guard he was wrestling with. Barton's eyes widened as he looked past the man in front of him at his compatriots who were preparing to fire. It became suddenly apparent that they were either more confident in their abilities to shoot past their own man, or they were simply less interested in what might happen if they shot him.

Barton stopped pulling on the weapon, and instead, when his adversary tried to wrench it back, Barton shoved forward, releasing his grip on the weapon and sending the man flying backwards into the fire of his own fellows. Barton dived to the side, behind cover at the corner of the wall, even as the hapless guard vanished in a blast of orange light.

Barton could hear them storming up the corridor towards him, even as Bellecotte, Jos, Thytos and Drayton streamed up behind him. The guards had only caught a glimpse of Barton, and so were unprepared for the quartet of weapons facing them as they rounded the corner.

The first, perhaps braver than he was intelligent or simply driven by adrenaline, raised his weapon, but he vanished in orange fire before he could have gotten close to drawing a bead. The second froze, then dropped his weapon. For the first time, the intruders stared squarely into the face of one of the men who had meant to kill them, and they found the face to be young and terrified.

His eyes were wide, and his lips trembled. “Please,” he said. “Please. I don't want to die.”

[[Jos,]] Kass said, asking for his direction.

“Please,” the young man repeated. “I'm sorry.”

“He's one of *them,*” said Cindy Rochemonte, speaking for the first time that Barton had noticed since she'd stepped of the ship, and speaking with a furious hate that he'd never heard from the French redhead.

“We don't know that,” Eve said quietly, though she sounded less sure of herself than she wanted to be.

[[Commander,]] Kass spoke again, demanding direction from the CO.

Jos looked conflicted, then set his mouth in a firm grimace. “Ms. Chen,”

Selyara stepped towards the young man, whose breath caught in his threat and whose eyes widened at her approach. Though she carried a weapon, it was her eyes which captured his attention and which unmanned him to his core.

“Plea-” he began.

“Hush,” she said without kindness as she reached up and applied her fingers to the base of his neck.

He fell to the deck with a thud.

“Let's get moving,” Jos demanded flatly. “And, Mr. Barton, please do not-”

The snoring guard's communicator crackled. [[Are you there? Is that you?]] The voice from the communicator was young, female, and sounded as if it was just barely winning the battle against full-throated panic. [[Hello? You're the ones from the shuttle? I know you're there; the phaser fire is registering in the system logs. Are you there?!]]

Jos' antennae flexed, and he picked up the communicator from the unconscious guard. Still recalling his absent-minded error on Lavenza, he didn't want to overplay his hand. [[Go ahead,]] he said into the communicator without further explanation.

[[This is Lynette Ryan. Cadet Lynette Ryan. I need your help. He's firing the Thaleron! I'm trying to get to the computer core to shut down the ignition sequence, but if I can't... Please you have to help me.]]

“Where is this core?”

[[It's just a little further down from where you're at. Follow the panels for the core. They'll show you.]]

“You're on your way there now?”

[[Yes, I-]]

And the feed was cut.

=[/\]=

SCENE: Edgerton's office.


[[I'm trying to get to the computer core to shut down the ignition sequence, but if I can't...Please you have to help me.]]

“The transmissions coming from maintenance tunnel 17-D. Would you like us to send a squad for her, sir,” Edgerton's security chief asked.

The former Admiral and current dictator didn't answer, and instead just kept staring at the bloody, blubbering pile that was Sam Henderson. He had born Edgerton's less-than-tender ministrations silently, except for when he screamed, and now his face was a nightmare. Where it wasn't bruised, it was swollen grotesquely. Where it wasn't bruised or swollen, it was cut open deeply and bleeding. He hadn't said a word while Edgerton had cudgeled him again and again, but at the sound of Lynette's voice, he made a low, barely-audible keening in the back of his throat.

[[Where is this core?]]

[[It's just a little further down from where you're at. Follow the panels for the core. They'll show you.]]

He'd come so...close. So very close to grabbing a hold of the Federation and remaking it in the image needed for the future: a strong image, a resolute image, his own image. Richard Edgerton had managed to put both of his hands against the Earth and push it off it's course, but now it seemed that it would roll back into place, crushing him beneath in the process.

But he had prepared, even for this. He knew that despite his own strength of will and vision, despite the abject loyalty of those happy few with eyes enough to see hard truths, despite the absolute RIGHTNESS of his cause, there would always be a chance that the sheep would, at the end, choose slaughter over freedom. He could lead the horse of humanity to the river of freedom, of self-determination, but for all his guile and intellect, he knew he could never make it drink.

But, even still, at the end of it all, if he needed to, he could drown the fucking thing.

That's what the Thaleron was for. It wasn't about vengeance, or bitterness, or sour grapes. The Thaleron didn't exist as a threat, it existed as a final security. If he couldn't make humanity strong again – make humanity great again – he could at least ensure that it didn't continue limping on as a weak and pathetic shadow of its own potential. He'd once read a 20th century novel about a group of men who lived tortured and abused in a mental health facility because they had proven unable to deal with the cruelties of the world outside. A man had come to them, a real man with thoughts and desires and agency of his own, and he had demanded that the others reclaim their own identities, their own strength. The hero was destroyed for his efforts. Not killed, but lobotomized, left as a will-less and drooling shadow of his own power. In the end, the narrator of the story had given the hero mercy with a pillow jammed against his nose and mouth, because it was better to be dead than to be a shadow.

Edgerton knew that most people wouldn't understand the kindness he was doing for humanity, but most people were idiots, and their idiocy and ignorance would not stay his hand. Better to burn the world and start again. Maybe they'd get it right next time.

And now...

And now this little puppy BITCH was going to shut down his satellites? Another Judas, like Leonard. Another piece of worthless irrelevance that he gave meaning to by deigning to grant her his attention, and this was how she would repay him?

[[You're on your way there, now?]]

[[Yes, I-]]

“Cut the feed,” Edgerton demanded, and the voices immediately died.

“We can intercept her,” the security chief offered hesitantly, made nervous by the insane glitter in Edgerton's eye.

“No. No, I think not. Let her go.”

“Sir?”

“I said, let her go. And the others, the intruders. Pull back the security details from their path.”

“Sir, I don't understand.”

Edgerton gave his security chief a hateful smile. “I'm in no way surprised. But carry out my orders. Then have a regiment of your best meet us in the computer core.”

“You're going down there?”

“Oh, yes. Yes, indeed.” He moved closer to Sam Henderson. “We're all going to go down and see Lynette. What do you think of that idea, Henderson?”

Sam moaned, though what that moan meant, only he knew.

=[/\]=

SCENE: Corridor


"They cut her off,” Jos announced. “Let's get moving.”

“Mon dieu. They're going to-” Rochemonte began. “They're going-”

“We'll stop them, Lieutenant. Let's get moving,” the Andorian stated firmly, though not without an element of reassurance.

“They're going to do it again.”

Standing a few feet to the side, Barton's head jerked up.

“Lieutenant. They won't. Not if we-”

Barton was unaware that his mouth was hanging open. He was staring at the group. Selyara Chen noticed his expression, and her posture straightened.

Rochemonte was in a fury. “Swine! Fucking monsters.”

“Specs,” Jake said cautiously.

“I TOLD YOU-” she spat.

“Cindy,” Jake corrected himself.

Barton's mouth moved, but his voice was a choked whisper. Only Selyara heard it, and only because her full attention was drawn to him like watching a hurricane approach the shore. “What does she mean 'again?'”

“Barton,” she said, but he didn't hear her.

Crichton continued. “Cindy, I get it. You need to stop him. We all need to stop him. We need to get moving, though?”

Tears were flowing down Rochemonte's face now, but there was no sob in her voice, only fury. “Paris, Jake. Paris. I'm going to kill him.”

Barton's eyes, like most of them, were locked on Cindy, but his expression was different. Some of them were looking at her with sympathy, a couple with concerned frustration. But there were fires of fury being kindled in James Barton's eyes, and Selyara watched only him.

“Paris,” he said, louder this time but still not loud enough to grab the others' attention. “Again,” he repeated. Suddenly his eyes jumped from Cindy Rochemonte to Selyara herself, and he stared a hole clean through to her soul, and suddenly she knew: he knew that she had kept it from him, he knew everything... or at least everything he needed to know.

“Jim,” she said, wondering how in the world she could talk him down, wondering if she might be able to get to him in time to shut him down again with a mind-meld before he...

Barton moved, slowly, so slowly, but for Selyara Chen it was as if the universe had slowed even further. She couldn't move fast enough to stop what was about to happen. She didn't know what it would be, but she knew it would be bad. “Jim,”

Thytos, standing near Barton, turned his direction. [[You okay, Jebediah? Yer' lookin' a little green.]]

Barton moved in the direction of the fallen Neo-Essentialist guard, even as the other crew moved to surround Cindy Rochemonte. Crichton put a reassuring hand on her back.

“We'll stop them, Cindy. But we have to get moving.”

[[Jebedi-]]

Barton raised the phaser in his hand and pointed it at the unconscious youth.

[[JIM!]]

At Kass' cry, Bellecotte's head whipped his direction, and both Marines lunged for him. Kass went low and Harry went high, and they crashed into the PHOENIX's security chief with enough force to break bones on a smaller man.

The phaser blast impacted just past the sleeping form of the guard, incinerating a hole through the floor through which they could see living quarters in the deck below.

Kass pushed herself up, as Jos and the others hustled over. [[What the fuck, Jim?! What are you? Jim! JIM?!]]

Barton's eyes were wide open, but unseeing. His face was slack and his mouth hung open dumbly.

“What's wrong with him,” Jake demanded, still with a hand on Rochemonte's shoulder, but staring at them.

[[I don't know,]] Kass said. She snapped her fingers in his face. [[Jim!]]

He didn't respond. He didn't move.

And somewhere inside, some part of Jim Barton desperately grabbed for handholds and failed, falling deeper into himself, hearing only the chastising screams of a city of dead children.

The screams of children.

*REMEMBER THAT?!*

And finally he did remember. He remembered in a way that he hadn't for years and years, even as he'd tried so frantically to forget and failed. He remembered that and nothing else as he fell further down inside of himself.

Further down into the chaos below...

Further down...

=[/\]=

NRPG: So, I'm thinking the pieces on the ground are moving towards endgame in the computer core. Lynette's on her way there, as are Edgerton, his guards, Sam, and our crew should be able to get there, if they can figure out what to do with a catatonic giant en route.

PHILIP: I guess this will be my “official” howdy-do to you. Glad you're with us. Hope I did Lynette justice.

=[/\]=

Dale I. Rasmussen
writing for
Lt. James Prophecy Barton
Sec/Tac USS PHOENIX